174 PALMERSTON

epiphany, pale mustard from cravat to waist and bottle-
green from waist to varnished boots. Lord Palmerston's
official concerns were largely unchanged. He still eyed
Russia coldly and watched Spain with solicitude, that was
scarcely diminished by the slow drift of victory towards
Queen Isabella's Anglo-Spanish forces. There was so much
to explain to a small sovereign with bright, protruding eyes;
and he explained it, in the easy manner which she found so
very clear, in London, in the big rooms in Windsor, and
even by the sea at Brighton. For she was at Brighton in
the autumn, a strange, vivacious little figure among the
Regent's stale chinoiseries. Lady Cowper was at Kemp
Town and saw a chance of Palmerston in the shortage of
men at the Pavilion. She wrote hopefully to him; and
before the week was out, he had his invitation. It was a
happy time, when Queen and ministers were intimates.
The sovereign might be (Mr. Creevey had seen it already)
" a resolute little tit." But as yet her resolution scarcely
checked her kindly feeling for the nice old gentlemen with
charming manners, by whom she was deliciously surrounded.
They talked, they rode, they laughed together. She even
took their opinions upon Uncle Leopold's letters, and sat
smiling between them at a great dinner just before Christmas,
when Lord Melbourne was " very clever and funny about
education"; and 1837 went out upon these happy
confidences.

That winter nipped an ancient flower where, almost
unobserved, Mr. Creevey, with his last note unwritten, his
last enquiry strangely answered—" Where shall I go next ? "
—went no man knew whither, dying " very suddenly and
none of his connexions ... at hand." The crowded vision
faded—Bruffam, the Doctor and the Beau, Mrs. P. with her
antics and Madagascar with her conversation, and the
distant royal forms of Our Billy, Prinny, and Old Nobs
himself—all had receded now. But the world went on in
1838. It read the Duke's Despatches or the news of Lord
Durham's last extravagance in Canada. An anxious Queen
found her Prime Minister looking a little pale; that easy